The TRIPOS filing machine, a front end to a file server

摘要

This paper discusses an experiment which sets out to improve the performance of a number of single user computers which rely on a general purpose file server for their filing systems. The background is described in detail in reference [1], but for completeness it is necessary to say something about it here.

The Cambridge Distributed Computing System consists, at the time of writing, of between 50 and 60 machines of various types, connected by a digital communications ring. On the ring, there are two file servers [2], [3], which are general purpose (or "universal" [4]) in the sense that they have no commitment to a particular directory or access control structure. This is done in order that they may support several client systems, and so that new systems may be added without difficulty. We speak of a particular directory and access control structure implemented over the file server as "a filing system".